Multi-Level Malignancy
The layered evils of network marketing.
Recently I had a run-in with a woman who tried to sell me salt water at $40 a bottle. We met through a ‘targeted networking’ group that charged a hefty fee for ‘high value introductions.’ (First meeting was free.)
When I spoke with the owner of the group, I told her my one dealbreaker was ‘anything to do with network marketing.’
“You have strong opinions!” she laughed, and put me in a breakout room with a woman who implied she was a health researcher.
This person proceeded to waste half an hour of my time, talking about the health benefits of ‘redox molecules’ (otherwise known as electrolytes, easily obtained by dissolving salt in water) and trying to bond over our mutual desire to heal humanity, before she disclosed her agenda: getting me to sell her $40 salt water to my clients, in the hopes that it would cure autism1.
The rest of our conversation was illustrative.
Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t do network marketing.” [Clear statement of boundary.]
Salt Water Shill: (concerned look) “Did you have a bad experience?” [Attempt to hack clear boundary with forced intimacy.]
Me: “It’s mathematically impossible to make money with MLMs. They’re machines for market over-saturation.” [factual statement]
SWS: “Don’t you want to help people? [ignoring both boundary and logic; false equivalence; manipulation]
Me: “Wanting to help people is WHY I’m opposed to MLMs.” [factual statement]
SWS: “You’re Not A Good Fit!!” [corporate jargon for ‘fuck you’]
Me: “THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU” [re-statement of clear, obvious boundary]
SWS: “You’re so NEGATIVE!” [abuse]
Me: [ends Zoom session]
What’s an MLM?
In case you are fourteen years old, or have successfully avoided contact with humans over the last few decades, here’s a brief overview of the Multi-Level-Marketing business model, also known as network marketing, or direct sales.
It’s a pyramid scam.
No, really.
Multi-level marketing businesses operate by distributing their products and services by means of people who pay up front for the privilege of selling them, and who recruit friends and family to sell them as well. Every person in the distribution chain takes a cut of the proceeds.
Examples of MLMs:
When you are recruited into an MLM, you are enticed with promises of great wealth, freedom to set your own schedule, self-empowerment, and a community of similarly free, wealthy, empowered women.
(Oh yes, MLMs are targeted primarily at women, because patriarchy.)
As an MLM distributor, you ‘invest’ in selling overpriced products in an oversaturated market, on a commission-only basis. When you ‘recruit’ your friends and family into this ‘business opportunity,’ you are creating your own competitors, to everyone’s downfall.
I explained it to my fourteen-year-old daughter thus: “Say you were selling nail polish to your friends. Then you got Myra, Agatha, Jasmine, Norah and Toby to sell the exact same nail polish to your exact same friend group. How many customers would each of you have?”
“Not many,” she replied. Bingo.
If my fourteen-year-old can grasp the concept of market saturation, why isn’t this taught in junior high? It is both easier to grasp and more immediately practical than Algebra 1.
Market saturation means that it is mathematically impossible for 99.6% of MLM distributors to make money.
Important: ‘mathematically impossible’ does not mean ‘possible if you work hard, have a good attitude, and Believe.’ It means ‘impossible unless you founded the company yourself, with capital acquired by means other than shilling for someone else’s MLM.’
In other words, you cannot climb a pyramid. You can only try—and fail—to find other volunteers to lie down for you to step on.
But that’s not the worst of it.
Empowerment Gaslighting
When you join an MLM, you may be seduced by the lie that you are ‘building your own business.’
It is important to understand that you are NOT the business owner. You are the customer.
Otherwise, when you and your friends and family go bankrupt and/or quit buying more product that stacks up in your garage, the MLM would go bankrupt, too.
But the founders—and the company—continue to thrive. The impossibility of making a living through product sales and recruitment is not a bug for them. It’s a feature.
Because then they can sell you a limitless number of events and trainings, in order to teach you to accomplish the impossible. Moreover, they leverage the best parts of you to do it.
The best parts of you: your values, personality, intelligence, creativity, diligence, and network of friends and family—otherwise known as your social capital.
Social capital is your most valuable asset. When you leverage your relationships in service to a toxic business model, you destroy those relationships, while funneling financial capital out of your community, and into the pockets of those who are manipulating you in order to maintain their empire.
Shame as a Weapon
When a system uses your strengths against you, it sounds like this:
“You can do anything you set your mind to.”
“Don’t be negative.” (When you mention math, or the fact that you’re not making bank, or that they lied to you to get the meeting.)
“You need a Miracle Mindset.” (Or a Money Mindset, or a Success Mindset, or a Self-Empowerment Mindset. Anything that keeps you blaming yourself for your lack of results.)
“Change happens from within.”
“Trust me.”
“Don’t you want to be the best you can be?”
“Don’t you want to be a success?”
“Don’t you like money?”
“You failed because you were greedy. Or lazy. Or negative. Or had the Wrong Mindset.” Not because of them and their toxic business model.
Rhetoric like this keeps you trapped in a shame spiral. It disconnects you from self and others, because every time you try to set a healthy boundary—like quitting—it’s framed as a character flaw.
Why Aren’t MLMs Illegal?
People at the tops of pyramids make the laws.
And control the school systems.
You don’t want to hurt your friends’ feelings.
The last twelve times you were approached by a friend selling leggings, or skincare, or essential oils, or protein shakes, you didn’t tell her that she was in a toxic cult which was destroying her social and financial capital. You said something polite and noncommittal.
Because you didn’t want to torch the relationship.
Exploitive systems rely on your unwillingness to squander your social capital by calling out their lies and manipulation. We go along to get along, even those of us whose job is to know better.
Once I was sitting in a room full of aspiring entrepreneurs, listening to a business coach who specializes in How To Make Money.
When asked about MLMs, here is what she did NOT say:
“MLMs are a toxic business model which destroy your financial and social capital, and are impossible to succeed in unless you found the company.”
She said, “When people fail at MLMs, it’s because they don’t focus enough on the product.”
One of this business coach’s star students had built a seven-figure business, training people how to succeed at MLMs. This star entrepreneur exclaimed, in private conversation, “Ninety-six percent of people fail to make money in an MLM!”
For her, this was a market opportunity. Not an ethical red flag.
But #Girlboss!
I have no capital, and I want to start my own business! MLMs give me an easy way to do it! How dare you disempower me?
If you want to join an MLM in order to improve your sales and relationship-building skills, go for it! You can turn anything into a growth experience.
But once you have those skills, don’t waste your social capital on shilling for oligarchs. Deploy your strengths on behalf of your local community. Get good at solving a problem that people have, and offer to solve it. Start a garden design business, or a child-care business, or a healing practice.
You have nothing to lose but fantasies.
Not even going to START on the pseudoscience quackery.
MLMs have been coming to my attention, recently. I listened to a podcast episode on Navigating Narcissisim, about a person’s experience with Lularoe. It was eye opening Your post is a great synopsis of all the important points to make with MLMs, and the underlying dynamics of cult or cult-like groups. Thanks for writing this!
Yep. It’s really very simple: To make money honestly, you have to be adding value for the consumer, however you derive it. Salesmanship of an overpriced, average product, doesn’t do that.